From April 23 to 27, a working visit to Beijing was made by IAIS Deputy Director Odil Gafarov, Leading Research Fellow Mushtariy Usmonova, and Chief Specialist for Human Resources and the Doctoral Program Saida Saidkhonova.

The IAIS delegation participated in Ludong University’s academic seminar dedicated to issues of China’s foreign policy positioning, the role of Central Asia in China’s strategic calculations, the development of transport and logistics routes, regional security, competition for critical mineral resources, as well as specific aspects of bilateral and multilateral relations.

A series of meetings was also held with representatives of Chinese research centers and universities, with representatives of the School of Regional and Country Studies at Ludong University – Professor Wei Hai and Research Fellow Gao Shuang, as well as Hanwen Luo, a research fellow at the Institute of American and Southeast Asian Studies at Liaoning University. In addition, representatives of the Institute also met with the assistant dean of the Institute of Country and Regional Studies at Peking University, as well as the director of the Center for Central Asian Studies at Peking University, Shi Yue.

During the meetings, the parties discussed prospects for developing academic and research cooperation between Uzbek and Chinese expert communities, including joint research, educational programs, short-term lecture courses, and new formats for institutional interaction.